Document creation utilizing application driven device controlled display standalone, or host connected, computer work stations has generally been accomplished in the text processing area by keying to a display screen. When the screen is full of text, additional keying will result in scrolling to provide room or space on the screen for additional text. As more and more text is input and scrolled, there is a tendency for an operator to forget what was keyed sometime earlier. The result is a loss of correlation between various portions of the document being created. To recover, the operator must re-refer to notes, dictation tapes, etc., or scroll back through, or reverse scroll, the keyed-in document. Although, not a mentally taxing task, it is time consuming.
Split screen facilities or application programs are available for viewing and comparing various portions of the keyed-in document. In using these facilities, one can, for example, create two view ports and cause one portion of a document to be displayed on the top half of a display screen and a different portion to be displayed on the bottom half of the screen. Side by side viewing is also possible. In addition, capabilities have been provided to further divide the screen. Commonly, on the first division the screen is divided into halves, on the second division the screen is divided into fourths, etc.
Split screen applications generally satisfy an operator's wants or needs of being able to compare one portion of a document with another. However, utilizing these applications is also time consuming and tedious.
In recent times, windowing systems or applications have become popular. Different portions of a document can be reviewed and compared, but separate windows must be created. Creating separate windows also requires operator time, effort, and attention. In addition, to meet as many operator wants or needs as possible, users have increased the applications' capability to the extent that windows can be increased or decreased in size. This can be for purposes of either magnification or increasing the size of the portion of the document being viewed.
Whether review and comparison has been by reverse scrolling, or using a split screen or windowing application, absent has been a flexible and user friendly interface for visually correlating various portions of a document during creation.
From the above, clear deficiencies exist in the prior art. These deficiencies cause the prior art to fall short of either anticipating the instant invention or rendering the instant invention obvious. More specifically, the instant invention presents an advance over prior art systems, applications, and techniques in that an operator can readily create a first window on a display screen for input of data for one portion of a document, input data larger than the window, create a second window on the screen for another portion of the document, input data larger than the second window, and so on for all portions of the document. Thus, a portion of a number of preceding portions of the document are viewable while inputting a current portion. The advantages of this advance are reduced operator attention and confusion.